For in person advertising this kind of knowledge is widespread and does not really need to be mentioned, but for in print marketing I find many companies don't really consider this idea, and I have to wonder why.



For the sake of argument I am going to use brochure printing as my primary example for a handful of different reasons. The primary one is that custom brochures are longer than most other advertisements, and because of that length you have a greater importance put on the final impression you make. If you are looking at a postcard these need to be designed so that a person can absorb it all in the span of seconds. That means your first impression and last impression are practically combined.

Full color brochures do not offer you the same luxury, making sure you need both a strong opening and a strong closing if you want to come away with a successful brochure.

Now, the reason why most companies think more about the opening is because this is what is going to get persons to read the brochure in the first place. If the opening is weak they will never even pick the brochure up. I do not argue with that. But nothing changes the fact that the strongest opening will not make up for a weak close, and the close is the last impression, so it needs to be strong.

The best way of closing is with a call to action. Always tell people what they need to do next now that they have read all of this information. Maybe they need to call you today, write to you today, or come into your store right away. Maybe they should not wait another second to act, or they need to go to this website to see more about what your store has to offer.

Each one gives them a clear follow up action that not only lets them know what the next thing should do is, but also says so in a forceful enough way to encourage them to act.

You do not want them sitting around with this information but to act on their desires right away. Obviously each call to action is going to change depending on what your brochure was talking about. You need to be sure that your final word is closely linked to your first one.

As with brochure printing, any longer form of advertising is going to need a strong close. And to clarify from earlier, yes, even postcards and posters need to have a closing statement, they are just going to be even more heavily linked with the opening one.